


dead hearts

by pallasjoanna



Category: Frozen (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-09
Updated: 2014-06-09
Packaged: 2018-02-03 23:56:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1760129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pallasjoanna/pseuds/pallasjoanna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anna dies when they're children, and Elsa's left with a ghost.</p>
            </blockquote>





	dead hearts

**Author's Note:**

> this was originally from my tumblr and was based on that horror "do you want to build a snowman" post going around. this is more of angst though.

Anna doesn’t move.

No matter what they do, Anna stays still, her hair turning white, and snow starts to gather at her fingertips and at the tip of her nose. Her mother is already crying and her father is yelling at the trolls.

Elsa stares at her hands. In that moment, she hates her powers, she hates herself so much, and if only there is something she can do, she will, as long as Anna will be alright. The tears come cold instead of warm on her cheeks ( _Please Anna Anna Anna I won’t do it again please wake up_ -) just as her sister turns to ice.

—

Even in a new room, the snow starts immediately, and the floor freezes over. Her father never visits her there, and her mother can only stay for a few moments before her breath fogs and she shivers too much. Elsa can’t feel what they do (the cold never bothered her).

They tell the people that it was an accident, a fall, but they never say where or how. The gates are closed after the funeral. For weeks after, the snow stays floating in the air and her ice is so dark that it’s nearly black.

One night, just as Elsa gets used to the absence of a warm weight on the other side of the bed, the snow stirs. A flurry of white moves and forms into something shifting and just barely tangible. She thinks she can see Anna sitting at the edge of her bed.

She blinks and reaches for her.

No. This Anna is too pale, too thin, too cold, and too still. Elsa shrinks back against the headboard, her heart pounding furiously in her ears as this time, Anna reaches for her, her icy grin too wide.

( _"Can we play, please, Elsa?"_ )

—

They never believe her whenever she tells them during the early hours of the morning because Anna is always gone by then. 

Her mother kisses her cheek and her father gives her a pair of gloves before they leave.

"Do you have to?" she asks. Without them, everyone will know. She can’t conceal it, and her room is already decorated with sharp icicles that protect her as much as they keep out everyone else. 

She waits everyday at the balcony, her hands freezing the railings as she looks out to sea. They don’t come back.

Of course they don’t.

When all the formalities are done, Elsa slumps against the door of her room and even time seems to freeze because she doesn’t know how long she stays there. (The castle staff know never to knock on her door, even if they don’t know the reason why.) She doesn’t cry this time, but the numbness weighs down on her bones, on her heart. 

Anna appears again, still a little girl to her even if ten years have passed. Elsa thinks that maybe she’s crying, too.

Back then (and her throat constricts at the thought of the past), whenever either she or her sister was sad, they would hug each other through the night, because that’s what sister’s are for, right? They’re supposed to be there for each other. Anna crouches in front of Elsa, snow falling from her face in place of tears. Her eyes are empty.

( _"I’m right here for you."_ )

Elsa stares at her.

( _"It’s just you and me."_ )

"You’re not real," she whispers hoarsely. "Go away."

—

The gates open for the first time in so many years. She clenches her hands, feeling the cold seep out of her gloves. It’s just for one day. Just for one day, she repeats to herself over and over again. Conceal. Don’t think. Don’t feel.

The crown weighs heavy on her head. 

She smiles at all the visitors, nodding, deflecting questions if needed, exploiting all her skills in diplomacy. Her mother would be so proud of her as she stands on the raised platform of a ballroom, now a queen. Maybe Anna would have liked to dance with everyone here.

But she cracks when the prince from the Southern Isles offers her a drink and talks about her parents and her sister. Says about how he’s sorry that she had to live with being alone for so long.

She wants to throw up when he mentions the rumors here and there, that Elsa may not be completely innocent in the deaths of her family, but he would never believe that of her, yes? And then he says something else, but she can’t hear him over the roaring in her ears. 

The wine in her goblet turns to ice.

It’s a wonder that she has managed to hide for so long.

—

She runs across snow and through mountains, the winds pushing her onward. When she stands at the peak, looking at a vast expanse of white and Arendelle is merely a pinprick on the horizon now, she laughs, Her voice echoes down in the rocks below her. Her parents once said that it was hard to breathe up so high, but the cold thin air fills her lungs. It makes the perpetual weight in her chest lighter.

She spins snow into the air, brands ice into the ground and creates a kingdom all on her own. 

But even up here, Anna follows her.

( _"Whoa, Elsa. This is so amazing!"_ )

On the days when winds died down, Anna’s voice is merely a whisper, enough that Elsa can ignore her, but when the storms come, Anna is a force of nature as well, running and skidding on the floors, her laughter echoing within the empty castle. She doesn’t look like a child anymore; she looks like the beautiful girl she would have grown up to be.

Except that she’s not Anna. Her grin is too wide and her eyes are too empty. Anna is the sun and summer back h— back in Arendelle. She isn’t snow and icy winds and intangible snowflakes.

( _"You’re still saying that?"_ )

"Please just go away."

( _"We can’t stay up here forever."_ )

"I’m the only one staying up here."

( _"Nope. I’ll be here for you. That’s what sisters are for, right?"_ )

Elsa tries to laugh, but it comes out like a sob. “Said who?”

Anna smiles sadly.

( _"You."_ )


End file.
